Research infrastructures

You need the right instruments if you want to accomplish great things. Especially when it comes to basic research and the pursuit of long-term scientific goals, research facilities are required that call for major investment and considerable effort. Because of their often unique application potential, these large research infrastructures are usually used in a cross-departmental, interdisciplinary and international way.

They enable us to look into the most distant galaxies and analyse the smallest particles of matter. They open up new worlds and help to take science forward.

Germany is home to several of these research infrastructures (RIs) of global significance.

What are research infrastructures?

Research infrastructures are major instruments, resources or service facilities for research in all disciplines that stand out because they are of at least national significance and have a long life – as a rule, more than ten years. Access to them is fundamentally open, and their use is arranged on the basis of research quality standards.

The costs of their development and construction are so high that they require substantial national public funds and therefore justify an extensive national decision-making process. They include, for example, marine and polar research vessels, globally organised climate research infrastructures, life sciences networks and platforms for social sciences, humanities and cultural studies specialists.

Research infrastructures roadmap

Which research infrastructures will be required in the coming years and decades? Which are meaningful? Which are urgently needed?

A national roadmap process was launched in 2015 to decide on future research infrastructures. Education and research institutions can contribute their ideas on new complex research infrastructures.

On the basis of scientific and economic criteria, independent experts determine which new research infrastructures should be included in the roadmap and receive funding. The selected projects will be listed in a current national research infrastructures roadmap in 2018.

The roadmap is also intended to facilitate policy decisions on which European and international research infrastructure projects Germany should participate in.

Research activities

Research activities are conducted in a wide range of disciplines, such as

Materials science

Biology

Biochemistry and medicine

Energy technology and physics

Social sciences, humanities and cultural studies

Budget

The Federal Government provides the majority of funding for large-scale equipment in basic research with an annual budget of almost 1.1 billion euros (2015). Research infrastructures are also developed in international collaborative partnerships. International partners contribute to the funding of such infrastructures.

Founded in 1959, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) is an internationally renowned centre of fundamental research and one of the world’s leading institutions investigating the structure of matter. DESY is a member of the Helmholtz Association and is supported by public funds.

The German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ) provides high-performance computing services tailored to climate research. Its mission is to install and operate a high-performance computer system for basic and applied research in earth system sciences and to provide the associated services such as optimisation, parallelisation, data management and data visualisation.

The research vessel Polarstern was first commissioned in 1982. Since then it has completed almost 270 expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. Specially designed for working in polar seas, Polarstern is currently one of the most sophisticated polar research and supply vessels in the world.

FLASH at DESY in Hamburg was the first laser worldwide in the ultraviolet and soft X-ray range. Starting as a user facility in 2005, it was recently enhanced with a second light generating beamline, being the first FEL serving two beamlines at the same time, thus retaining its globally unique status.